alt Hacker NewsAvian cognition is so darn interesting. We associate the mammalian neocortex with "higher intelligence" (which is hand-wavy), but that structure arose after any common ancestor with birds.
The avian pallium is thought to be the analogue structure in birds, evolved separately.
Which is cool! Birds have separately evolved intelligence!
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And then we have octopi, with their separately evolved decentralised intelligence !
A mini brain in each arm, orchestrated by the main brain.
I've recently gone down the rabbit hole of watching pet bird videos on YouTube. The wide range of behaviors is so fascinating. They can be so affectionate, playful, mischievous, and just plain goofy.
The African grey parrots are fascinating in particular, with their ability to connect words to more abstract concepts like counting.
Even cooler, IMHO, is that invertebrates evolved intelligence (and almost identical eyes!) parallel to primate's and corvids'.
Squid, octopi, etc have cognitive abilities that sometimes overtake that of "intelligent" mammals or birds. Yet common ancestors are about as far away as is possible in animal kingdom.
(And also please remember this when ordering calamari next time ;)
Edit: I very much enjoyed this bestseller popular science book on invertebrates intelligence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Minds%3A_The_Octopus%2C_...